Sepang, Malaysia hosted the first test of 2016 as 21 riders took to the track for the first time since November. MotoGP world champion Jorge Lorenzo, continued where he left off in 2015 as he dominated the field.
The Yamaha racer opened with a 2m 00.684s lap on the opening day of official testing at Sepang in Malaysia, a time which is over one full second quicker than anyone else. Valentino Rossi came closest, a late lap putting him only 1.033s behind his teammate. Completing the top three was the Repsol Honda rider Dani Pedrosa at 2m 01.780s.
Second fastest rider Valentino Rossi said, “The gap to Lorenzo is too big, but it's also true that he was stronger than everybody else, so he was able to have a better rhythm. On the other side, my position is not so bad and we worked a lot on the bike. It‘s just the first day and the total count will be at the end of the third, but we have a lot of things to do. I‘m quite happy because the electronics already work quite well. We‘re not at the same level as last year, but it‘s already good to ride the bike and especially the Michelin front tyre improved a lot, so the feeling when you ride the bike is more similar to last year. These are the two important issues. We had three bikes, but one of them was just meant for doing a few laps, it was the old one. We have two 2016 bikes and I did my fastest lap time on the bike that‘s more similar to the 2015 model, so it‘s a little bit half and half, but just because I didn‘t have enough time to work on the 2016. I did only one stint and it wasn‘t so bad, we will continue tomorrow and see. Our first issue for this test is to decide which one, so tomorrow we‘ll try to get a better understanding.”
Coming in third, Dani Pedrosa said, “Today was not the easiest day, it's obvious we had some problems with the bike, we need to work. But the positive thing is that Honda knows about it, and Honda is working a lot from Japan, they are putting in a lot of effort. So I do the same and try to share the best information with them and approach the problems we have and try to find the best way out of the problems.
“For tomorrow we will try to finish the test with some improvement from today. At the same time, having some experience with the Michelin, they have changed some front tyres, and we will be testing some different front tyres. But obviously some work to do, and looking forward to improve.”
Testing will restart at 10 am Malaysia Local Time on Tuesday and will last eight hours. We will keep you updated with further developments from the track.
